Seek. Kill.
The two biological imperatives that had once been meant to be wielded by their makers, carefully crafted to be turned upon their opponents, those less fortunate enemies of empire, now were turned on them. Unstoppable, unbreakable and altogether unignorable. Ripping, clawing, tearing. Inhuman mangling of flesh, lit up by human screams. No more time, no more stopping. Less thought, no conscientious objector. Claws. Rapping once, twice, three times on vent grate. No response. No nothing. Not right. Growl, rising in chest. In throat. In mouth, drooling, feral.
“…Everything, uh, everything still okay out there?” Muffled voice from companion. “I probably should have… asked before, but…”
No reply. No time. No words. Only danger.
…
…
Sebastian, not waiting, not here. Distinct wrongness, like an inconsistent heartbeat. A pit in the belly. Seek. Sought. Seek elsewhere.
For good measure, War Machine pried open the grate, craned their long neck down for a peek. Must be sure. Sure to be sure. Perhaps he had sensed something they didn’t, abstained from a response for a reason.
…No. Right. Of course. Always. Listen more. To me.
No, indeed, he was not there, not at all, his shop conspicuously vacant and untouched, barren of any life. Still. Too still. Blood pounding with worry, powered by terrified fury. Snarling, War Machine turned again, recoiling from the vent, holding their head high, eyes — all four — closing, homing in on something, anything, any sign —
Not too far. Commotion, hushed. Strange. Below all others.
Private. Vindictive.
Intimate.
No time to waste. Go now.
So, they went. Newfound purpose, point of their terminus just in reach. And it wasn’t long, then, before the source by which they’d been now vexed came into earshot, revealed itself to them, words sharp with a demented edge of revenge.
“You fucker,” snarled an unfamiliar man. “Hah. Well, did you get it all out of your system? Are you—” an angry, heavy breath, “— are you happy? Satisfied with your tantrum?” The sound of rattling breath now, someone else’s — familiar. Sound of blunt impact. Bile, rising in throat. But no growl. Silence. Stalking forward. From the room down the hall. Sound of splattering blood. Laboured breathing, retching. Shouts of angry man. No one likes an angry man.
“Whether you fight me or not, it doesn’t matter to me. Really, just makes it more cathartic. But you’re not getting out of this easy, oh no.” A depraved, manic, bloodthirsty laugh erupted, this time. “I’m going to take my sweet, fucking time with you, you fucking beast. And I’m gonna enjoy it.”
Only a pained moan came in reply, tapering off to a whimper. Distressed. Desperate. Wounded. Kith. Kin. The urge to panic, to run in metaphorical guns blazing, was strong, but suppressed. This would be a cold kill, agonizing in its repayment for pain endured. Enjoyable. Another hit, the sound of a blunt object connecting with flesh. The desperate gasp for air, another shuddering breath. One more ache for bloodshed on the great death’s tongue, moving forward like a black mist.
“Hah,” said the man, voice short and breathy from the exertion, laced with sweat. Sweat. Sweat the smell of which grew stronger as War Machine crept up to the doorway, began to round that final corner, movements as fluid as they were silent, cold and calm. “What, did you think I was gonna let you go easy? After all the trouble you caused? You’re not special. You couldn’t just stay down and do your job? Animals like you should know their place.” The words came out like a venomous hiss.
Head high. Get a good look. Pinpoint target. Envision outcome.
Go for the heart.
War Machine watched with furious, disdainful eyes as the man — dressed in Urbanshade combat gear but having removed his helmet — roughly drove his foot into the side of Sebastian’s torso, who himself was weakly curled up in the corner in a tangle like a beaten dog. Both were laden with the evidence of a struggle, but ultimately one had come out on top, and now saw fit to toy with his prey until such a moment he either decided his fun was over or the other could not last the assault any longer. Sebastian, though facing the door, didn’t even seem to acknowledge their arrival, eyes distant and hazy, and the other was too caught up in bloodbath fever to even feel the hulking presence coiling like a death god behind him.
A wheeze. “Nnnnnn…” Sebastian whined. “…Mommm…”
A laugh. “Seriously? Crying out for mommy? Give me a break.” He took the weapon in his hand — what appeared to be a large baton — and lifted his victim’s head, meeting unseeing eyes. “Honestly, this is just pathetic. And stop crying, for fuck’s sake. It’s not gonna do you any good. No one’s coming to save you. Really, I thought y—”
Strike.
Demon heartbeat thumped like an oil drum through War Machine’s head as they forced the sharp, chitinous crest into his back. The spray of blood, in its thick and viscous rivulets, was instant; kept pouring as in what felt like righteous slow-motion fever they pushed through sinew, marrow and meat on their blade’s quest to the heart, heard the snapping of bones as their weapon ran through. With an angry, guttural, echoing sound, half whale-call and half crypto-terrestrial scream, they threw their head back triumphantly, letting the slick of viscera on their lanceolate horn pull their quarry down its length as it, seemingly too dumbfounded even to scream as the hole through its chest grew wider, only groaned in a dazed manner. Dying enemy. As it should be. Savour it.
Right. Just. No less.
Victorious, eerie trilling filled the air now, as sanguine ichor poured down their face and at it they lapped like a thirsty war-hound, taking pleasure in the taste of fear and confusion, of stress and anger — before whipping their head to the side violently, sending their speared prey off and crashing to the ground with a gory crack that carried like a shot — dying, but not dead. Warning.
A few precious seconds, then — a sickening squelch as War Machine turned about-face and slammed a heavy back foot square onto the damn thing’s skull — when they thought about it now foreign, alien — sending fragments of bone and sopping brain matter flying about, coating their talons — and finally, finally coming down from that beast-of-prey high, lucidity flowing back into instinct veins. Well done, rest now.
Human worry was fit to take over now as W.M., panting, turned their attention to their last compatriot, whose miserable and battered — nigh broken — body laid heaving on the ground in a heap, eyes wild but glazed over, gaze desperate and in pain. Their own gaze soft, warm, and worried, W.M. brought their head down to meet his, gently nudging their fallen friend’s face as if to rouse him, albeit to little response but a delirious groan.
“Sebastian,” they whispered, studying the wounds big and small that littered just his visage alone, and not even counting those all over the rest of him, “Sebastian. Can you hear me?”
A muffled sob in reply. “M-mom,” he whimpered bleakly. “…’M sorry.”
The tense grip of awkwardness and poor people skills was not, even now, lost on W.M., though they did not deign at all to make it known. “It’s alright,” they cooed, doing their best to give him some kind of reassurance even as their speech wavered. They so desperately wanted to believe their own words, as much for their sake as for his. “You did so well.”
“…I tried,” he rasped through tears. “I really…”
“I know.” they said, even through the crack in their voice.
”It hurts.” His tone was almost childish, now. Wanting nothing more than to be somewhere, anywhere else. Wanting nothing more than the comfort of youth.
”I know.”
”…I think I…” he paused to draw in a shuddering breath. “Dying,” he offered.
”You will be alright. Everything will be fine.”
“N-no, it—” he paused, his own sentence cut off by a spasming hiccup, “I—”
“Hush,” W.M. urged. “…You have to be.” Their voice tapered to a pleading pitch. “It isn’t over yet. I’ll see to it." They cast their gaze aside, blinking hard. No time to spend grieving, and especially not preemptively. He was alive, that was enough. That had to be enough. There was no time for triage, not until they got to the submarine at the very least. “…Save your energy. You need it. We’re running out of time.”
Sebastian made to protest, but before he could do so, or voice any objection at all, no matter how feverish or incoherent — W.M. was quick to gently start to lift what they could of him up off the ground with their head, pushing themselves under him like a fulcrum and leveraging their crest to do so. The wet slick of blood that covered him and thus them as they did no longer incited carnivorous frenzy but instead empathetic revulsion. The blood of kinfolk, not of game. And really, a fair share of righteous anger, too — at the world, at the people who’d unmade them, who’d sewn them back up into new forms and used that as reason to bring them misery, and ruin; and pain and torture and every other terrible-thing under the sun. Careful with where they were pointing the lethal weapon on their spine (or scalp, one of the two), they gingerly rolled their back, calmly tossing his torso across their back as gently as they could such that his face could rest in the divot between their shoulders. Their additional arms worked in primal tandem to help lift the rest of him up as best they could, with a little verbal encouragement pushing him to coil the length of his own body around theirs, in a rather monstrous facsimile of horse-and-rider.
The last run was at hand, the final, maddening dash to that fixed endpoint where all destinies were decided. And if it were to be faced — which, make no mistake, it was — then it was to be faced head-on.
And so would it be.